Digital marketing is probably the most important tool for businesses and companies today, as it provides them with the opportunity to reach out and expand their brand presence on the internet.
Before launching any digital marketing campaigns, there is one important thing that you must do. That is to determine how you are going to measure the effectiveness of it.
Digital marketing campaigns can be affected by a myriad of factors which may be beyond the control of marketers or business owners. These factors would include:
- Macro/global movements or trends
- Change in business/industry conditions
- Economic fluctuations
For example, during a pandemic like COVID-19, certain businesses are affected negatively by it while others may thrive and flourish. Thus, working with larger trends would help improve the effectiveness of your campaign significantly. Just imagine sailing on a boat with the wind versus against it.
Determine Goal or Objective
First and foremost, to be able to determine the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaign, you will need to define the objectives you are setting out to achieve.
List of possible digital marketing objectives could include:
- Increase brand or product awareness
- Drive traffic
- Engagement
- Generate leads
- Increase sales revenue
These objectives would generally help you streamline what the metrics of your digital marketing campaign be. Thus, by establishing early on what is the goal or objective of your campaign, you would be able to assess the effectiveness of it. In addition, you may also learn how you can utilise digital marketing to achieve your business goals and objectives with our following article:
Assess The Channel or Platform
With digital marketing, there are many available channels or platforms that you can use for your campaign. From social media marketing to search engine marketing (SEM). Hence, by establishing which channel or platforms you would be using for your digital marketing strategy, you would be able to identify which metrics would be appropriate. This is due to the different nature of each channel and platform.
Identify Key Metrics
After you have determined the goal or objective of your digital marketing campaign, you would need to identify what the key metrics or KPIs are. We can further break down what would the following key metrics of digital marketing be used for:
- Total Website Visits: Brand or product awareness
- Traffic by Source: Brand or product awareness
- Bounce Rate: Driving traffic or engagement
- Reach: Brand or product awareness
- Impression: Brand or product awareness
- Clicks or Interactions: Driving traffic or engagement
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): Driving traffic or engagement
- Cost-per-Click (CPC): Generating leads or increasing sales revenue
- Conversion Rate: Generating leads or increasing sales revenue
- Cost-per-Conversion (CPC) or Cost-per-Acquisition (CPA): Generating leads or increasing sales revenue
Total Website Visits
Your website is basically the home base or face of your digital strategy. With that being said, your digital marketing efforts are likely to drive traffic to it. Campaigns being run on social media channels or even SEM may focus on increasing your social media reach or generating leads, but the overarching goal should be to garner more traffic to your website eventually. Thus, increasing your total website visits or traffic is important when trying to increase brand awareness, drive consideration and generate leads.
Traffic by Source
This metric is useful as it helps uncover where your website visitors come from. For example, if you are running multiple digital marketing campaigns across different platforms, you would be able to decipher which channel or platform drives the most traffic. Hence, enabling you to make more sound decisions when running future campaigns.
The 4 main website traffic sources that are tracked by Google Analytics include:
- Organic Search
- Direct Visitors
- Referrals
- Social
Bounce Rate
This metric refers to the percentage of users who leave or “bounce away” from your website after viewing only just 1 page. Unlike Exit Rate, which is more specific to the user experience of your website. A high bounce rate can help determine the following reasons why users are leaving:
- Your website takes too long to load
- They did not find what they were looking for on your website
- They may have found relevant content, but were not enticed to click on other pages
- There was an error page loaded
Reach
Reach basically tells you the number of unique users or people that your advertisement has reached. Generally, the number of reach is always much higher than the number of clicks or interactions.
Impression
This digital marketing metric is generally important when running brand awareness campaigns. Not to be confused with reach, impressions refer to the overall number of views that your advertisement has garnered. Your ads on social media or SERPs may be shown multiple times to a user and each time it appears, it is counted as 1 impression. Hence, the number of impressions is always higher than the reach metric.
Clicks or Interactions
Clicks or interactions are basically the engagements made on your advertisements. For search marketing, this would refer to the number of clicks. On the other hand, for social media, this would refer to clicks, likes, shares or comments. This metric tells you the number of engagement your campaign has received. For campaigns with objectives that involve driving traffic to your website or a sales landing page, this would be an important metric to take note of.
Cost-per-Click (CPC)
When running digital marketing campaigns, the way the budget is being spent matters a lot especially for campaigns that focus on generating leads or conversions.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The Click-Through Rate or CTR is one of the most crucial digital marketing metrics, especially for social media marketing, email marketing and SEM or PPC campaigns. Additionally, this metric can be referred to as the interaction or engagement rate of your advertisement. The metric basically indicates the percentage of users who have clicked on your ads. Even across the different digital marketing campaigns, the higher the CTR is, the lower your CPC would be.
Conversion Rate
This metric is basically the percentage of conversions made on your website or tracked via your campaign. However, conversions may refer to different types of actions based on the campaign’s goal or objective. This could refer to sales, leads, subscribers or downloads.
Cost-per-Conversion or Cost-per-Acquisition
In order to calculate the Cost-per-Conversions or Cost-per-Acquisition, you would need to define what exactly is a conversion or acquisition. For example, this could be when a user becomes a lead, downloads a free e-book or makes a purchase. That said, it is important to monitor this metric as the value should not be too high. When the value is high, it is a clear indicator that the campaign is not profitable or worthwhile in achieving its goal or objective.
Review Campaign Performance
To effectively review your campaign, it is best to compile the data and pay attention to your KPIs. In this case, the key metrics which you have identified for the campaign. You can utilise the built-in dashboards for Google Analytics, Google Ads or Facebook Ads to help summarise the campaign performance data. Additionally, you may review the performance data with readily available industry benchmark data to help you better assess your digital marketing campaign.
Conclusion
Overall, the key to measuring the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns would include defining the campaign goal or objectives, key metrics and reviewing the performance. With that being said, to ensure that your digital strategy is successful, it is good to regularly test and optimise your campaigns.
Find out more about how you can improve and optimise your digital marketing campaigns in the articles below: